Project Hellmouth
by airawyn
Summary: A Buffy-Fight Club fusion featuring the Trio.


Title: Project Hellmouth (1/1)  
  
Author: Airawyn  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Disclaimer: Buffy stuff belongs to Mutant Enemy. Fight Club stuff belongs to Fox Movies and Chuck Palahniuk.  
  
Notes: AU, sometime after Graduation Day 2. Includes BtVS Season 3 spoilers and Fight Club spoilers. Thanks to my beta readers Fab and Laurithrie.  
  
* * * * *  
  
People are always asking me if I know Warren Mears.  
  
"Three minutes. This is it. Ground zero. Would you like to say a few words to mark the occasion?"  
  
I make a noise. With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels. He pulls the gun out of my mouth.  
  
"I can't think of anything." I say.  
  
For a second I totally forget about Warren's whole controlled apocalypse thing and I wonder how clean that gun is.  
  
"Getting exciting now."  
  
That old saying? How you always hurt the one you love? It works both ways.  
  
The hilltop we're standing on won't be here in three minutes. You take a 98-percent concentration of virgin's saliva and add it to three times that amount of sodium chloride. Add a vampire's tears drop-by-drop with an eyedropper, and bury the solution in a graveyard under a full moon. Dig it up under a new moon, and you've got a formula that will open a gateway to hell.  
  
I know this because Warren knows this.  
  
And suddenly I realize all of this - the magic, the dimensional gateways, the apocalypse, has something to do with a boy named Andrew Wells.  
  
* * * * *  
  
I'm in my support group for suicidal teens. My parents sent me here after that whole "gun in the school clock tower" incident. It's great. When people think you might blow your head off, they really *listen* to you. I tell them about my tragic relationship with Buffy Summers that ended when I knew I could never make her truly happy, so I had to let her go. I'm in the middle recounting how she begged me to stay, when *he* walks in. Andrew, who went to Sunnydale High with me. Andrew, who knows that Buffy barely even knows my name. He doesn't say anything as he comes in. I finish my story, and the group welcomes him.   
  
He tells a tragic tale about his father abandoning his family. I just sit there, fuming. I remember hanging out at his father's house during the summer. His dad lived a block away from his mom's house. He's got the *nerve* to barge into *my* group and start making up stories. I bet he isn't even suicidal.  
  
After the session is over and everyone is leaving, I grab his arm.  
  
"I'm on to you," I hiss. "You big faker. Don't ever come back here, or I'll expose you."  
  
"Go ahead," he says. "*I'll* expose *you*." With that, he pulls away from me, and leaves.  
  
* * * * *  
  
I skip my next group session. It's not worth it if someone's going to be sitting there disbelieving everything I say. Instead I go to the Espresso Pump, and hang out, reading "The Feeling Good Handbook." I hate my life. I wish I could change it or become someone else.   
  
"Hey." I look up and a tall, dark, good-looking guy is standing by my table, holding a yellow cappuccino cup.   
  
"Mind if I join you? All the tables are full," he says.  
  
"Sure, no problem," I say.  
  
"I'm Warren Mears," he says, sitting down. "That's an interesting book choice." I self consciously glance at my book.   
  
"Oh, well, you know..." I stammer.  
  
"Hey, nothing wrong with it," he says. "But I've got a book that I bet you'll like better." He pulls out a worn leather volume with faded gold lettering on the front. I can't read the title, though. I don't even know what language it's written in. I look through the book, staring at the engravings and trying to make out the words. He watches me, sipping his coffee.  
  
"Come on," he says finally, getting up.  
  
"Where are we going?" I ask.  
  
"Somewhere a little more private."  
  
I hesitate for a moment. But it's not like I have anything better to do.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Back alleys in Sunnydale are not usually the best place to hang out. But when you're playing with dark magic, you don't want to advertise it either.   
  
"Try this one," he says, stabbing his finger on a page I'm looking at.  
  
"Vre-thon cret wranth f'gran," I read. The page glows with a pale blue light. The light increases, flowing over the page and dripping onto the ground. Pretty soon I'm standing in a puddle of light.  
  
"Keep reading," says Warren. I realize there's a second part to the incantation.  
  
"Asra cret wranth f'blan," I say. The light shoots up, expanding into a column and completely encompassing me. It's incredible. Every bit of me is tingling. I feel powerful. Alive.  
  
"Thought so," says Warren. The light begins to fade, and so does the tingling. I don't respond until the spell has fully dissipated.  
  
"Thought what?" I ask finally. I notice there's now a blue tattoo on the back of my hand in the shape of some foreign letter.  
  
"You've got it. Magic power. I had a feeling about you."  
  
"Yeah? Huh," I say.   
  
"Yeah," he says. "I'm thinking we could do something with this stuff. Take over Sunnydale, or something." He grins.  
  
"Take over Sunnydale," I repeat thoughtfully. Sounds pretty good to me.  
  
* * * * *  
  
That's how everything started. Me and Warren hanging out in an alley. It grew quickly, though. We ran into old friends at the comics store or whereever and got them to join us. We moved into an empty mansion on Crawford Street and started holding meetings every night. Now we make plans and practice magic and try out the weapons Warren builds.  
  
At the beginning of each meeting, he gives a little speech.  
  
"Here you are, living in Sunnydale. Land of sun. Paradise, according to the PR people. Buy a house, raise your kids, live your life here. But we know better." There are nods and murmurs of agreement. "This isn't paradise. We're living on the mouth of Hell. Most people lock themselves inside at night. They have dinner, watch TV, and try to ignore what's outside. But we know better. Most of the people in this town are going to end up as vampire food or demon fodder. Because they can't look out their windows and see the truth. But I say we're not fodder. I say we're not victims. I say we look at the things in the dark and tell them, 'You just wait.' Because pretty soon *they* are going to be scared of *us*."   
  
The group cheers.  
  
  
  
We run the group, Warren and I. We're going to take over Sunnydale. No one can do magic like me.  
  
Then *he* shows up.  
  
* * * * *  
  
I don't know where Warren recruited Andrew. Maybe at the gaming shop. Doesn't matter. Andrew walks into the mansion one night, and all of a sudden he's running all these errands for Warren. He's stealing herbs from the Magic Box one day and bartering for computer chips at Chips & Bytes the next. He sees more of Warren than I do.  
  
I refuse to let it bother me. After all, I'm too busy working out spells for our plans to worry about what the others are doing. And so what if I'm sleeping more than I used to? I'm not being lazy. Magic takes a lot of energy. And all I have to do is look at the back of my hand and see the blue tattoo there to remember that I was the first. Warren chose me first.  
  
Then one day Andrew has the same blue tattoo on the back of his hand.  
  
* * * * *  
  
I'm searching the mansion, looking for Warren. He's got his own room upstairs, near mine, away from the bunks where the rest of the crowd sleeps. He's not in his room, and I turn to go, when my eye catches a pile of papers laying on the floor near his bed.   
  
I pick up the papers. There are diagrams of rituals I've never seen before. I flip through the papers and spot the name Quortoth. Quortoth? That's a hell dimension. As I search I find more names; Grargan, I'wia, Hwark, Nokvaonin, V'rwich... They're all hell dimensions. Most of the other papers are gateway spells and rituals. But opening a gateway to a hell dimension has a high possibility of sucking the surrounding area into that hell dimension...  
  
I hear the sound of a throat being cleared. I look up, and Andrew is standing in the doorway.   
  
"What the hell is this stuff?" I ask, waving the papers at him. He looks confused.  
  
"It's Project Hellmouth," he says, like I should know that already.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Project Hellmouth? What we've been working on?" I stare at him. He asks, "Are you okay?"  
  
"Yeah," I say. "Where's Warren?" Now he's looking at me like he might need to call the men in white coats.  
  
"Um, why don't you just hand me that..." he says, reaching for the papers I'm holding. I yank them away.  
  
"What the hell is going on?" I ask. He begins to pout.  
  
"Look, Warren, this isn't very funny," he says, and I feel like someone's just pulled the Earth's emergency brake, because my world screeches to a halt.  
  
"What did you say?"  
  
"I said this isn't very funny." I just stare at him. "Um, ok, I'll come back when you're feeling better." He leaves.  
  
"Now that's not very nice, scaring the poor kid like that," says Warren, who is now standing beside me, hands in his pockets.  
  
"What's going on? Why does he think that I'm you?" I ask. He grins.  
  
"I think you know the answer."  
  
It's not possible.  
  
"Because - we're the same person?" I ask.  
  
"You got it, Sparky," he laughs. "You wanted to be someone else. You were hanging out in Hellmouth Central, wishing you were different. And so - you were. All the ways you wished you could be, that's me. Naturally you're still wrestling it, so sometimes you're still you. Other times you imagine yourself watching me."  
  
"But what's all this?" I wave the papers at him.  
  
"Like the kid said. Project Hellmouth. A way to close the Hellmouth. Wipe the slate clean. You'll be a hero."  
  
"But these rituals will suck all of Sunnydale into hell! And maybe the rest of California and the Southwest." I say. He shrugs.  
  
"Small price to pay," he says.   
  
"No," I say. "It's not going to happen." He smiles, and pulls his right hand out of his pocket.  
  
"Yes, it is," he says, and blows a handful of powder in my face. I manage to hold on to consciousness for at least ten seconds before collapsing.  
  
* * * * *  
  
I wake up, and I'm tied to a tree, with Warren holding a gun in my mouth. I can see most of Sunnydale from the hilltop.  
  
"Three minutes. This is it. Ground zero. Would you like to say a few words to mark the occasion?"  
  
I make a noise. With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels. He pulls the gun out of my mouth.  
  
"I can't think of anything." I say.  
  
For a second I totally forget about Warren's whole controlled apocalypse thing and I wonder how clean that gun is.  
  
"Getting exciting now."  
  
That old saying? How you always hurt the one you love? It works both ways.  
  
The hilltop we're standing on won't be here in three minutes. You take a 98-percent concentration of virgin's saliva and add it to three times that amount of sodium chloride. Add a vampire's tears drop-by-drop with an eyedropper, and bury the solution in a graveyard under a full moon. Dig it up under a new moon, and you've got a formula that will open a gateway to hell.  
  
I know this because Warren knows this.   
  
Right now Andrew and the other space monkeys we've recruited are performing a complicated ritual in a cavern below our feet.   
  
"You've got to stop this," I say.   
  
"It's too late," he says.  
  
"We'll die too!" I say.  
  
"We'll live forever. We'll become gods," he says.  
  
I search my head, trying to think of a way to convince him. Convince me. Then I feel a wave of power wash over me, and I hear a rumbling beneath me. Warren catches my eye and grins.  
  
"See you on the other side, Sparky," he says, and disappears.  
  
My last thought as I'm sucked into hell is, "Buffy's going to kill me."  
  
THE END  
  
* * * * *  
  
Author's Notes:  
  
This is what happens when I read Buffy fic while watching Fight Club.  
  
With apologies to Joss Whedon and Chuck Palahniuk. Some parts taken verbatim from Fight Club.  
  
All things Buffy belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. All things Fight Club belong to Fox Movies and Chuck Palahniuk. No ownership is implied or intended. 


End file.
